Canyon Moon

"A boy at fourteen needs a mother or the memory of a mother as he does at no other period of his life."-Enoch's Diary.

Except for its few blocks that border Washington Square, MacDougal

Street is about as squalid as any on New York's west side.

Once it was aristocratic enough for any one, but that was nearly a century ago. Alexander Hamilton's mansion and Minetta Brook are less than memories now. The blocks of fine brick houses that covered Richmond Hill are given over to Italian tenements. Minetta Brook, if it sings at all, sings among the sewers far below the dirty pavements.

But Minetta Lane still lives, a short alley that debouches on MacDougal Street. Edgar Allan Poe once strolled on summer evenings through Minetta Lane with his beautiful Annabel Lee. But God pity the sweethearts to-day who must have love in its reeking precincts! It is a lane of ugliness, now; a lane of squalor; a lane of poverty and hopelessness spelled in terms of filth and decay.

About midway in the Lane stands a two-story, red-brick house with an exquisite Georgian doorway. The wrought-iron handrail that borders the crumbling stone steps is still intact. The steps usually are crowded with dirty, quarreling children and a sore-eyed cat or two. Nobody knows and nobody cares who built the house. Enough that it is now the home of poverty and of ways that fear the open light of day. Just when the decay of the old dwelling began there is none to say. But New Yorkers of middle age recall that in their childhood the Lane already had been claimed by the slums, with the Italian influx just beginning.

One winter afternoon a number of years ago a boy stood leaning against the iron newel post of the old house, smoking a cigarette. He was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age, but he might have been either older or younger. The city gives even to children a sophisticated look that baffles the casual psychologist.

The children playing on the steps behind the boy were stocky, swarthy Italians. But he was tall and loosely built, with dark red hair and hard blue eyes. He was thin and raw boned. Even his smartly cut clothes could not hide his extreme awkwardness of body, his big loose joints, his flat chest and protruding shoulder blades. His face, too, could not have been an Italian product. The cheek bones were high, the cheeks slightly hollowed, the nose and lips were rough hewn. The suave lines of the three little Latins behind him were entirely alien to this boy's face.

It was warm and thawing so that the dead horse across the street, with the hugely swollen body, threw off an offensive odor.

"Smells like the good ol' summer time," said the boy, nodding his head toward the horse and addressing the rag picker who was pulling a burlap sack into the basement.

"Like ta getta da skin. No good now though," replied Luigi. "You gotta da rent money, Nucky?"

"Got nuttin'," Nucky's voice was bitter. "That brown Liz you let in last night beats the devil shakin' dice."

"We owe three mont' now, Nucky," said the Italian.

"Yes, and how much trade have I pulled into your blank blank second floor for you durin' the time, you blank blank! If I hear any more about the rent, I'll split on you, you-"

But before Nucky could continue his cursing, the Italian broke in with a volubility of oaths that reduced the boy to sullen silence. Having eased his mind, Luigi proceeded to drag the sack into the basement and slammed the door.

"Nucky! Nucky! He's onlucky!" sang one of the small girls on the crumbling steps.

"You dry up, you little alley cat!" roared the boy.

"You're just a bastard!" screamed the child, while her playmates took up the cry.

Nucky lighted a fresh cigarette and moved hurriedly up toward MacDougal Street. Once having turned the corner, he slackened his gait and climbed into an empty chair in the bootblack stand that stood in front of the Café Roma. The bootblack had not finished the first shoe when a policeman hoisted himself into the other chair.

"How are you, Nucky?" he grunted.

"All right, thanks," replied the boy, an uneasy look softening his cold eyes for the moment.

"Didn't keep the job I got you, long," the officer said. "What was the rip this time?"

"Aw, I ain't goin' to hold down ho five-dollar-a-week job. What do you think I am?"

"I think you are a fool headed straight for the devil," answered the officer succinctly. "Now listen to me, Nucky. I've knowed you ever since you started into the school over there. I mind how the teacher told me she was glad to see one brat that looked like an old-fashioned American. And everything the teachers and us guys at the police station could do to keep you headed right, we've done. But you just won't have it. You've growed up with just the same ideas the young toughs have 'round here. All you know about earnin' money is by gambling." Nucky stirred, but the officer put out his hand.

"Hold on now, fer I'm servin' notice on you. You've turned down every job we got you. You want to keep on doing Luigi's dirty work for him. Very well! Go to it! And the next time we get the goods on you, you'll get the limit. So watch yourself!"

"Everybody's against a guy!" muttered the boy,

"Everybody's against a fool that had rather be crooked than straight," returned the officer.

Nucky, his face sullen, descended from the chair, paid the boy and headed up MacDougal Street toward the Square.

A tall, dark woman, dressed in black entered the Square as Nucky crossed from Fourth Street. Nucky overtook her.

"Are you comin' round to-night, Liz?" he asked.

She looked at him with liquid brown eyes over her shoulder.

"Anything better there than there was last night?" she asked.

Nucky nodded eagerly. "You'll be surprised when you see the bird I got lined up."

Liz looked cautiously round the park, at the children shouting on the wet pavements, at the sparrows quarreling in the dirty snow drifts. Then she started, nervously, along the path.

"There comes Foley!" she exclaimed. "What's he doin' off his beat?"

"He's seen us now," said Nucky. "We might as well stand right here."

"Oh, I ain't afraid of that guy!" Liz tossed her head. "I got things on him, all right."

"Why don't you use 'em?" Nucky's voice was skeptical. "He's going down

Waverly Place, the blank, blank!"

Liz grunted. "He's got too much on me! I ain't hopin' to start trouble. You go chase yourself, Nucky. I'll be round about midnight."

Nucky's chasing himself consisted of the purchase of a newspaper which he read for a few minutes in the sunshine of the park. Even as he sat on the park bench, apparently absorbed in the paper, there was an air of sullen unhappiness about the boy. Finally, he tossed the paper aside, and sat with folded arms, his chin on his breast.

Officer Foley, standing on the corner of Washington Place and MacDougal Street waved a pleasant salute to a tall, gray-haired man whose automobile drew up before the corner apartment house.

"How are you, Mr. Seaton?" he asked.

"Rather used up, Foley!" replied the gentleman, "Rather used up!

Aren't you off your beat?"

The officer nodded. "Had business up here and started back. Then I stopped to watch that red-headed kid over there." He indicated the bench on which Nucky sat, all unconscious of the sharp eyes fastened on his back.

"I see the red hair, anyway,"-Mr. Seaton lighted a cigar and puffed it slowly. He and Foley had been friends during Seaton's twenty years' residence on the Square.

"I know you ain't been keen on boys since you lost Jack," the officer said, slowly, "but-well, I can't get this young Nucky off my mind, blast the little crook!"

"So he's a crook, is he? How old is the boy?"

"Oh, 'round fourteen! He's as smart as lightning and as crooked as he is smart. He turned up here when he was a little kid, with a woman who may or may not have been his mother. She lived with a Dago down in Minetta Lane. Guess the boy mighta been six years old when she died and Luigi took him on. We were all kind of proud of him at first. Teachers in school all said he was a wonder. But for two or three years he's been going wrong, stealing and gambling, and now this fellow Luigi's started a den on his second floor that we gotta clean out soon. His rag-picking's a stall. And he's using Nucky like a kid oughtn't to be used."

"Why don't you people have him taken away from the Italian and a proper guardian appointed?"

"Well, he's smart and we kinda hoped he'd pull up himself. We got a settlement worker interested in him and we got jobs for him, but nothing works. Judge Harmon swears he's out of patience with him and'll send him to reform school at his next offense. That'll end Nucky. He'll be a gunman by the time he's twenty."

"You seem fond of the boy in spite of his criminal tendencies," said

Seaton.

"Aw, we all have criminal tendencies, far as that goes," growled Foley; "you and I and all of us. Don't know as I'm what you'd call fond of the kid. Maybe it's his name. Yes, I guess it's his name. Now what is your wildest guess for that little devil's name, Mr. Seaton?"

The gray-hatred man shook his head. "Pat Donahue, by his hair."

"But not by his face, if you could see it. His name is Enoch

Huntingdon. Yes, sir, Enoch Huntingdon! What do you think of that?"

The astonishment expressed in Seaton's eyes was all that the officer could desire.

"Enoch Huntingdon! Why, man, that gutter rat has real blood in him, if he didn't steal the name."

"No kid ever stole such a name as that," said Foley. "And for all he's homely enough to stop traffic, his face sorta lives up to his name. Want a look at him?"

Mr. Seaton hesitated. The tragic death of his own boy a few years before had left him shy of all boys. But his curiosity was roused and with a sigh he nodded.

Foley crossed the street, Seaton following. As they turned into the Square, Nucky saw them out of the tail of his eye. He rose, casually, but Foley forestalled his next move by calling in a voice that carried above the street noises, "Nucky! Wait a moment!"

The boy stopped and stood waiting until the two men came up. Seaton eyed the strongly hewn face while the officer said, "That person you were with a bit ago, Nucky-I don't think much of her. Better cut her out."

"I can't help folks talking to me, can I?" demanded the boy, belligerently.

"Especially the ladies!" snorted Foley. "Regular village cut-up, you are! Well, just mind what I say," find he strolled on, followed by Seaton.

"He'll never be hung for his beauty," said Seaton. "But, Foley, I'll wager you'll find that lad breeds back to Plymouth Rock!"

Foley nodded. "Thought you'd be interested. Every man who's seen him is. But there's nothing doing. Nucky is a hard pill."

"Maybe he needs a woman's hand," suggested Seaton, "Sometimes these hard characters are clay with the right kind of a woman."

"Or the wrong kind," grunted the officer.

"No, the right kind," insisted Mr. Seaton. "I'm telling you, Foley, a good woman is the profoundest influence a man can have. There's a deep within him he never gives over to a bad woman."

Foley's keen gray eyes suddenly softened. He looked for a moment above the tree tops to the clouds sailing across the blue. "I guess you're right, Mr. Seaton," he said, "I guess you're right! Well, poor Nucky! And I must be getting back. Good day, Mr. Seaton."

"Good day, Foley!"

And Nucky, staring curiously from the Square, saw the apartment house door close on the tall, well-dressed stranger, and saw a taxi-cab driver offer a lift to his ancient enemy, Officer Foley.

"Thinks he's smart, don't he!" he muttered aloud, starting slowly back toward the Café Roma. "I wonder what uplifter he's got after me now?"

In the Café Roma, Nucky sat down at a little table and ordered a bowl of ministrone with red wine. He did not devour his food as the normal boy of his age would have done. He ate slowly and without appetite. When he was about half through the meal, a young Irishman in his early twenties sat down opposite him.

"Hello, Nucky! What's doin'?"

"Nothin' worth talking about. What's doin' with you?"

"O, I been helping Marty, the Dude, out. He's going to be alderman from this ward, some day."

"That's the idea!" cried Nucky. "That's what I'd like to be, a politician. I'd rather be Mayor of N' York than king of the world."

"I thought you wanted to be king o' the dice throwers," laughed the young Irishman.

"If I was, I'd buy myself the job of Mayor," returned Nucky. "Coming over to-night?"

"I might, 'long about midnight. Anything good in sight?"

"I hope so," Nucky's hard face looked for a moment boyishly worried.

"Business ain't been good, eh?"

"Not for me," replied Nucky. "Luigi seems to be goin' to the bank regular. You bet that guy don't risk keepin' nothin' in the house."

"I shouldn't think he would with a wonder like you around," said the young Irishman with a certain quality of admiration in his voice.

Nucky's thin chest swelled and he paid the waiter with an air that exactly duplicated the café manner of Marty, the Dude. Then, with a casual nod at Frank, he started back toward Luigi's, for his evening's work.

It began to snow about ten o'clock that night. The piles of dirty ice and rubbish on MacDougal Street turned to fairy mountains. The dead horse in Minetta Lane might have been an Indian mound in miniature. An occasional drunken man or woman, exuding loathsome, broken sentences, reeled past Officer Foley who stood in the shadows opposite Luigi's house. He was joined silently and one at a time by half a dozen other men. Just before midnight, a woman slipped in at the front door. And on the stroke of twelve, Foley gave a whispered order. The group of officers crossed the street and one of them put a shoulder against the door which yielded with a groan.

When the door of the large room on the second floor burst open, Nucky threw down his playing cards and sprang for the window. But Foley forestalled him and slipped handcuffs on him, while Nucky cursed and fought with all the venom that did the eight or ten other occupants of the room. Tables were kicked over. A small roulette board smashed into the sealed fire-place. Brown Liz broke a bottle of whiskey on an officer's helmet and the reek of alcohol merged with that of cigarette smoke and snow-wet clothes. Luigi freed himself for a moment and turned off the gas light roaring as he did so.